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December 7, 2016

Harry and Snowman

On Sunday my trainer and her husband invited Nick and I to watch Harry and Snowman with them at the Studio Movie Grill in Indy. If you're not familiar with the concept, it's a full service bar and restaurant with chair side service before/during the movie.

All I really knew of Harry and Snowman before I watched the movie was my mom, who was a girl at the tail end of Harry's Show Jumping career. She'd always say, "Oh I love them!" when anyone mentioned them.

By the end of the movie, though, I could totally see why my mom loved the two of them. It reads like a Disney movie, with Snowman escaping his new home three times and running six miles "home" to Harry after Harry tried to sell him. And Harry's constant admonitions to his children that "The horses always come first. If you're hungry, your horse is hungry too and he can't feed himself."

Two things really stuck out to me. The first was just how much Snowman was allowed to be a horse. Not just a horse, but a family pet. There's video footage of the children diving into a lake off of Snowman's back, and of course the above picture pretty much says it all. The best Show Jumper in the country today probably gets turned out in bell boots, split boots and a bubble wrap, and here Snowman is being a jungle gym on his days off. And he was just as happy doing that as he was jumping.

The second was Harry saying (paraphrased) love the horse you've got. He bought and sold horses his whole life, but he always tried to improve the horses' lives and do right by them, as a thanks for what they did to provide for his family.

PC: Bill Ray Photography/Sidelines Magazine

It was just the thing I needed to hear as my hiatus from the barn ended. Love the horse you've got today.

10 comments:

It's such a powerful idea to love the horse you have. Each horse is unique and they have good qualities that are easy to love, and some quirks that can be a bit more challenging to love... but at the end of the day the horse in the barn is the one you chose <3